It didn’t happen overnight for me, it took time for me to
believe that writing was a viable career. I wanted it, sure, but I didn’t see
how I could make the shift from my day job to full time writer.

It happened slowly, one day, one book at a time. But the
shift really accelerated once I stopped thinking of the time I spent writing as
expendable.

Writing is my career.

It is now my profession, lifework, and I move rapidly toward
it at full speed.

Before I shifted my thinking toward being in the middle of
my writing career, writing was something I had to make time for. When I was
lucky to find that time. Everything else came first. And the biggest time
contender, like many of you, was always the job I already had. At minimum,
fifty hours every week was committed to meeting the requirements and
expectations of that job—not including commute time. Every hour spent working
for someone else was an hour not spent working for myself moving rapidly toward
the career I really wanted.

As I said, it didn’t happen overnight, and I needed the proof first, books
out in the world selling and being read by readers, before I was able to
completely jump. And that jump made me pause, think, doubt—but I did it anyway.

When the signs were there that it was time, when I could no
longer keep up with both careers because I am only one person who also requires
sleep, I switched.